Saturday, 14 June 2014

Introduction to Advertising Optimization – High Paying Ads

There are many different advertising programs out there for bloggers –
but most fall into three camps in terms of revenue. Firstly there is
Cost Per Click (CPC) advertising, secondly Cost Per Impression (CPM –
the M stands for the Roman numeral for one thousand and these ads are
calculated on what you’re paid per one thousand impressions rather than
per click) and thirdly there are programs that allow you to choose your
own rates per time period (like BlogAds, Adbrite and private
sponsorships).

CPM Ads – When it comes to CPM advertising programs it
is pretty difficult to have much impact upon the ad value being paid. A
program like Fastclick
(aff) does let you specify which ads run on your site (or rather it
lets you block some of the campaigns that it offers) and thereby you do
have some impact on the level of income on your blog – but the process
is reasonably messy and in my experience not really worth messing with
(the tailoring of campaigns that is).

On the other hand the other two types of ads give you much more control over your ad values.

Time Related Ads - Obviously the ads you set the price
on yourself is a matter of finding a price in the demand and supply
spectrum that advertisers are willing to pay. This is not always easy
and from my experience it can take a little time to hone in on the right
figure to charge.

For BlogAds and
Adbrite ads for instance I usually just come up with a price that is
similar to what others seem to be charging in my niche (BlogAds lets you
look at what others charge) and then adjust it up or down over time
depending upon how many people buy ads. If no one is buying I reduce the
price, if people are buying lots I increase it.

When it comes to private ads it gets more tricky. I always struggle to
know what an ad is worth and generally try to enter into a conversation
with the advertiser to sound out their budget before coming up with a
price. Again it’s about negotiating and seeing what others are paying.
Over time you’ll get more of an idea on how to set your prices.

CPC Ads – These ads are usually more of an art form in
systems like AdSense, YPN and Chitika. Different ads pay different
amounts – largely dependent upon the keywords that triggers that
advertisement. For instance in an ad program like AdSense if you have a
blog about financial related products, the ads that appear on it are
likely to pay more than a blog that is on the topic of pencils.

The
reasons are pretty obvious really – advertisers are going to be less
likely to pay big dollars for ‘pencil ads’ than they are for ones
advertising financial products.

What follows are some tips on how to maximize the amount that AdSense
and Chitika ads will pay per click (I suspect that YPN will be similar
to AdSense).

Finding High Paying Ads in AdSense

I’m often asked (weekly) by readers what keywords they should target
on AdSense to maximize their income. My answer is always the same –
target keywords that you’re writing about – relevant ads will always pay
much better than irrelevant high paying ads (simply because people
won’t click irrelevant ads).

Having said this – it can be worth doing some investigating around
keyword value in AdSense because there can be significant differences in
payouts on very similar words.

Finding high paying AdSense words isn’t always an easy thing though. Do a search for Google on High Paying Adsense Ads and you won’t find too many sites listing the best keywords for Adsense. The top Adsense users in Adsense discussion forums
tend to be pretty secretive about not only what keywords they focus on,
but also what sites they run. I don’t blame them either – its good
business sense really.

Having said this there are a number of strategies and tools that you might like to employ to help find high paying keywords.

Buy them – Finding high paying keywords for your
blog is possible by yourself for free – but as with everything a few
entrepreneurial types are willing to do the leg work for you to save you
some time and give you a comprehensive result. One service that you
might like to try to find good keywords is Top Paying Keywords
(aff). I know of a number of ProBlogger readers who use it although
have never felt the need to use it myself. I’m much more into the next method.

Trial and Error – I know this will frustrate some
of you who want a nice and easy quick fix but overall it is one of the
best pieces of advice I can give. Try writing on a topic – track the
results – if it pays off do it again….lots. Adsense allows you to track
specific pages or sections of your blog using its ‘channels’ feature –
if you’re smart you’ll watch which sections of your blog are generating
the highest ads by dividing your overall earnings by the number of
clicks and comparing it to other channels. Keep trying new topics until
you strike gold and then dig in like crazy!

7 Searchhas
a list of the 100 of the top paying keywords (in their advertising
program – not Adsense) at the moment. Its a bit depressing actually to
see a list like this because you’d have to sell your soul somewhat in
order to go with many of them. Its an interesting site to check out
though.

Also from 7 Search (and more useful) is their Keyword Suggestion Tool
which gives you an idea of what people are paying per click on
different tools (again this is not specifically for Adsense but it will
give you an idea of what the going rates are).

Overture offers a service
where you can enter your keywords and they will not only tell you how
much advertisers are paying for the words but also how many people are
searching for the term. This is a very useful tool that I use a lot to
check keyword values. You do need to remember that the results you get
with them are not for AdSense but another ad system and that they are
what advertisers are willing to pay for words – and not what publishers
get (ie the middle man always takes a cut). I do find it useful to
compare keywords though.

Sign up for Adwords-
One way of getting a feel for how much people are willing to pay per
click is to sign up with Google as an advertiser yourself. It doesn’t
cost much to start a mini campaign and do some research this way. You’ll
get a feel for what people are bidding on different words very quickly
this way.

Word Tracker is
a good tool to help find keywords that people are searching for in the
major search engines. The excellent thing about Word Tracker is that
they also tell you how many other sites out there are targeting the same
words. This is very handy as it will stop you targeting ‘Britney
Spears’ as a Keyword phrase even though its one of the most searched for
keywords on the web because literally hundreds of thousands of other
sites have beaten you to the punch. Word Tracker has a free version to
trial it.

Finding High Paying Ads for Chitika eMiniMalls

Probably the best advice that I can give with choosing the right
keywords for your Chitika eMiniMall ads is to use trial and error and to
track your experiments.

Ideally you’ll want to target keywords that are relevant to your content
as much as possible (relevancy is crucial with these ads) but having
said that if you want to go after higher paying ads I’d suggest setting
up a channel for your test and to choose a keyword to test over a day or
two and to run it exclusively on that channel (ie don’t rotate words).

You’ll see very quickly (in that days statistics) by monitoring that
channel what the keyword is paying. The next day try another word and
see how it goes.

In this way you can not only track how much words are paying but also what kind of Click Through Rate the ads are getting.

I’ve also heard a number of bloggers say that if you search the ‘best
selling buys’ in the different categories of these online stores that
you will find higher paying ads. I’m not sure if this is the case – but
there is some sense in this. In any case with the coming of channels
we’ll soon know what type of keywords trigger what level of click
values.

Ad Value isn’t everythingI want to finish by re-emphasising that with CPC ads that
high paying ads are not everything. In fact you can have VERY high
paying ads and not earn a cent if your ads are irrelevant and are poorly
positioned and designed.

To maximise your ad performance you need to bring together all of the elements covered in this series – Traffic, Ad Position, Ad Design, Ad Relevancy and High Paying Ads. Become obsessed by any one of them and your overall earnings will suffer.